Modul Urban Design in Southeast Europe

* Maria Todorova, 1997 

The area of Central to South-East-Europe is characterized by strong similarities in its development by a partly shared history in planning culture, yet also by differences on how urban issues are tackled today. The module consists of core subjects which are complemented by content changing according to the focus of the semesters’ design studio which parallels the module. Core topics encompass urban infrastructure, urban space, territorial change, housing, cities and politics.

This years focus will be on the relation of administrative borders and railway development. The current desolate state of the rail-based transport network routes back to the 1960s and a rapid decline of the rail network. The years of the Yugoslav wars ultimately lead to its collapse. Since then, only a few reconstruction measures – especially in passenger transport – have been carried out, with complex administrative borders and entrenched structures making this process even more difficult.

Today the region is facing a paradigm shift: in the future, borders will become less impermeable, as all states are striving to join the European Union. An essential part of the European transport and mobility strategy is the expansion of Trans-European Corridors, which will connect the countries of the Western Balkans with each other and with the EU.

The module trains the capability to read urban structures, to reflect on processes of urbanization and urban reconfiguration by means of a body of critical techniques - interpretation of material, identification of suitable points of intervention, field research, mapping and cartography.

This semester, special focus will be placed on cartographic translation of the region’s scientific historical literature, by mapping geopolitical correlations of barriers and borders and transport policy. The collective memory will be explored by an additional layer of mapping autobiographical (non-fiction) literature of regional writers. The aim is the synthesis of both layers in one map, representing the findings of this semester.

Courses in the module:
260.764 VU Instruments for Urban Development in Central and Southeast Europe 
260.765 SE Seeing Space 
260.767 VO Lecture Series 
260.768 VU Space and society in time: Planning culture in transition